Jesus & Porn, etc. —

Jesus & Porn, etc. — Kevin Holtsberry cites scripture in order to vindicate the value of Christianity. Well, I'm not impressed. The principles expressed by Kevin's select passages have nothing especially to do with Christianity as such — in believing in a superpowered being from another dimension, that he was once born of virgin, died… but didn't really, saved us from our intrinsic awfulness, and so forth. All of that is just false, and it's bad to believe false things.

But I was thinking about the murder of heretics, providing a rationale for stripping millions of people of their natural freedoms for thousands of years, the subjugation of women, and so forth. The evils of porn are, well, just trivial in comparison. I'm not saying that there haven't been good consequences of Christianity, such as pretty cathedrals, the abolition movement and helping to aim the light of moral judgment on the individual person. But the history is just too complex for me to make an assessment about the net benefit. However, I do think that anyone who thinks the harm of porn has been worse than the harm of Christianity either never had a Western Civ course or is delusional.

Kevin argues further that there are conservatives who do in fact argue for their values on the basis of an understanding of human nature and history. He mentions Kirk, C.S. Lewis, Novak and Neuhaus. But those are producers of exactly the kind of historical quasi-fictions I had in mind. The selective histories these thinker's works contain are, like Marxist histories, constructs in service of ideology. And the essentialist, non-Darwinian view of human nature shared by all above is false.

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My own sentiments echo Braden’s. During the VP debate I was feverishly refreshing the page to get your latest commentary. Your liveblogging caused me to listen to the entire debate, which, I can assure you, I would not otherwise have done.

Ron

Hang in there, Will. You’re really good at this. I’m on the other side of almost everything you are, but you’re my man on these debates.